~ Politics and discussion from the Heart of Wales

The site has been transferred to a commercial host, enabling Yr Obdt Srvt to monetise it – that means we can host adverts and hopefully make a few quid from doing this.

With the blog currently averaging around 200,000 hits per month, and the possible revenue outweighing the amount YOS receives in Carers Allowance by a considerable amount, it seemed silly not to give it a go.

Visitors to the new site at voxpoliticalonline.com will notice that the adverts are intended to compliment the content, rather than clash with it. The idea is to provide commercial options that coincide with the reader’s interests.

However: This is dependent on the actions of the reader. If you click on an ad, that interest is registered and the programs that serve up ads to the site go looking for similar items. This is how they work to keep everything relevant. If you don’t click on any ads, you’ll probably see ads that don’t interest you.

We’re only a few hours in but already the Amazon ads I’ve put up are reacting well to the site, with a book about George Osborne, the excellent NHS: SOS and other relevant items all getting space on the revolving ad.

Google AdSense hasn’t done so well, so far – possibly because the program seems to have insisted on offering mainly financial service adverts. Hopefully this will improve with time.

Of course, you might see no adverts at all – if you have an ad blocker enabled. While you may have done this for perfectly good reasons, may I prevail on you to disable ad blockers when you visit voxpoliticalonline.com? If you can’t see – and don’t do anything with – the adverts, then the site will generate no money for its proprietor and Vox Political will go to the wall. As a reader and support of the site, it seems clear that you wouldn’t want that.

The hope is that Vox Political can transform itself from a highly-read amateur politics site (albeit one written by a professional journalist) into a professional site that makes a living for its author. Here at VP Towers, we’ve been stuck in the benefits trap for too long; this is our chance to escape.

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My Exaro colleagues Nick Fielding and Tim Wood deserve a big commendation for doggedly pursuing the Crown prosecution Service to force them to release a damning report revealing how the authorities missed their opportunity to prosecute paedophile MP Cyril Smith while he was alive.

After using the Freedom of Information Act the CPS has finally a year later released a police report showing the Rochdale authorities knew what Sir Cyril was up to – but the Director of Public Prosecutions declined to prosecute,.

The police superintendent in charge of the investigation in 1970 wrote;

“It seems impossible to excuse his conduct. Over a considerable period of time, whilst sheltering beneath a veneer of respectability, he has used his unique position to indulge in a sordid series of indecent episodes with young boys towards whom he had a special responsibility.”

As the 2015 general election approaches, it is becoming more obvious by the day what the Tory strategy is: there are no new ideas, policies will continue much as they are now, with the emphasis on denigrating Labour proposals and the Labour leader. If Labour announces details to increase income or corporation tax, Tories are ready to pounce.

The Tory propaganda machine has successfully convinced the more gullible that somehow the Labour government’s spending on schools and hospitals caused the 2008 economic crash, and that as a result, they cannot be trusted to manage the economy. It’s upon this, rather than their own proposals, that the Tory election programme is based.

Tories do not shout from the rooftops what their aims are: shrinking the state back to 1948 levels, a further reduction in social mobility and, of course, immigration, and more cuts in government spending. They will…

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Some have asked if this would have happened if David Clapson had not been a former soldier.

I, however, see this as a very small piece of progress. I’m always grateful for progress, whatever the reasons for it.

The case of a diabetic former soldier from Stevenage, who died after his benefits were sanctioned, has led to calls for a national review.

Last week, the Advertiser told the story of David Clapson, who could not afford electricity to keep his insulin cool after his jobseeker’s allowance of approximately £70 a week was suspended on June 28 last year.

Just three weeks later – on July 20 – he died aged 59 at his home in Hillside from fatal diabetic keto-acidosis, which the NHS calls “a dangerous complication of diabetes caused by a lack of insulin.”

Talking to the Advertiser, leader of Stevenage Council Cllr Sharon Taylor said the case…

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Unveiling the first commitment of the Liberal Democrat manifesto for next year’s general election, the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has pledged his party will keep to its pledges not to break its pledges – a pledge Mr Clegg pledged would not be broken despite previous pledges being broken which he had personally pledged were pledges he would not break.

In a statement to the press, Mr Clegg said:

“I want to make it absolutely clear that the pledges we are pledging before the next election in May 2015 will not be broken – unlike the previous pledges we pledged would not be broken before the last election. That is because the pledges we broke after the last election were pledges we didn’t pledge we wouldn’t break before the last election, unlike the present pledges which we can categorically pledge are pledges which we are pledging will not be broken either before or after the election. That is something…

The UK is to cut the amount of time EU migrants without realistic job prospects can claim benefits from six to three months, according to David Cameron – who seems desperate to take attention away from Andy Burnham’s speech today on the Coalition’s unwanted privatisation of the National Health Service.

According to the BBC, Cameron said the “magnetic pull” of UK benefits needed addressing to attract people for the right reasons.

But the announcement seems to be deliberately confusing.

It seems this restriction will only apply to people born abroad who have had a job in this country and then lost it. They are the only migrant group currently allowed to claim JSA for six months before the benefit is cut off “unless they [have] very clear job prospects”, as Cameron put it in the BBC article.

EU migrants who were claiming benefits in their own countries must fill in an E303 form in order to receive benefits at the destination country – which are issued at the same rates as in their country of origin for a total of three months only. Failure to find employment in that time means the loss of the benefit or a return to the country of origin.

The BBC article is vague about this; it’s as if Auntie – and Cameron – are trying to hoodwink you (shurely shome mishtake? – Ed) into thinking he is restricting benefits for people who come here looking for work, which is something he cannot do.

Perhaps Cameron is trying to avoid the embarrassment created by his last attempt to claim he was doing something about immigration; he announced five proposals, one of which related to all employers (quadrupling fines for those that do not pay the minimum wage), while the other four were already part of the law of this land.

Note also that he is still trying to say people are coming here from abroad in order to claim our benefits.

That is a lie.

From Vox Political‘s article last year: “UK citizens are a greater drain on the state than immigrants from Europe. Between 1995 and 2011 EEA immigrants paid in 4 per cent more than they took out, whereas native-born Brits only paid in 93 per cent of what they received. Between 2001 and 2011 recent EEA immigrants contributed 34 per cent more than they took out, a net contribution of £22bn.”

Considering the timing of this announcement, it seems likely that Cameron wanted something to take attention away from Andy Burnham’s speech on the Coalition’s dirty little backroom deals to privatise more of the NHS, reported on this blog earlier today.

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Analysis of the state of the economy shows the authorities were premature to celebrate a return to pre-crisis levels of GDP. The population has risen since then, so the money now in the economy does not go as far; the employment rate might be where it was before the recession by the net increase in jobs is almost entirely due to part-time and self employment, neither of which pays as much as full-time employment (on average). Real average earnings are estimated to be more than 12 per cent lower than before the recession. So where has all the money been going?
It seems George Osborne is reckoning on a big tax boost in January when self-employed people provide their tax returns. We must all make a note in our diaries and see how well THAT turns out!
The final words make it clear that even people who are paid to understand these figures have no idea where to go from here – so all the government’s fine talk is twaddle.

This was a watershed month for the UK’s slow recovery, with a number of things finally getting back to where they were before the recession. In July, GDP, the employment rate and the number of full-time jobs edged above 2008 levels. The FT did a celebratory piece this weekend with some great charts from Chris Giles.

When you look at the per capita figures, though, things don’t look quite so good. The population has risen since 2008, so, once you divide it up, 2008’s GDP doesn’t go as far.

The employment figures tall a similar story. The rate might be back where it was before the recession but the net increase in jobs has been almost entirely due to part-time and self employment.

The Government has consistently stated its belief that “modelling difficulties”
prevented the production of a cumulative impact assessment of welfare reform
which is sufficiently robust to be published. In particular, the outcome of medical
assessments – used in migrating claimants to reformed disability-related
benefits – cannot be inferred from the survey data upon which the
Government’s modelling is based.

The Government has implemented a programme of welfare reforms that have impacted on households in a variety of ways. Some households have been hit with cuts from more than one change in welfare law. The government have not carried out an assessment of how many people are affected by multiple cuts.

The Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC) said they have it difficult to assess the cumulative impact of the reforms, but have recognised a number of the concerns raised by the currently available evidence.

Scheming, lice-ridden vermin: All the airbrushing in the world could not erase the brutal, calculating dishonesty of the Conservative 2010 election poster.

This guy has been impressive from the get-go: Today (Tuesday) Andy Burnham will call on the Coalition to put its plans for further NHS privatisation on hold until there is clear evidence that the public wants the health service to be sold off.

The speech in Manchester is being timed to take place before the Conservative-led government signs a series of new NHS contracts that will – underhandedly – tie the hands of a future government.

Sly little devils, aren’t they?

The British public has never given its consent for far-reaching and forced privatisation of services – and that’s what Mr Burnham will be saying.

He will point out that the forced privatisation of the NHS is entering new territory and becoming harder to reverse: Contracts are being signed that will run throughout the next Parliament and beyond, tying the hands of the next government in a crucial area of public policy.

Not only is this unacceptable to Labour, but it has never been accepted by the public, and Mr Burnham will say that comedy Prime Minister David Cameron needs to be reminded that the NHS does not belong to him but to the British people – and he never received our permission to put it up for sale.

He will remind everybody that Cameron was dishonest about his privatisation plans before the last election. Cameron said there would be “no top-down reorganisation”.

If he wants to continue to force privatisation through, he should seek the consent of the public at the 2015 Election, Mr Burnham will say.

And he will contrast the increasingly fragmented and privatised travesty that Cameron wants to force on you – where service has become a postcode lottery dependent on the cost-effectiveness of providing certain forms of healthcare in your locality – with a public, integrated NHS as Labour intends to re-form it.

It was confirmed last week that NHS spending on private-sector and other providers has exceeded £10 billion for the first time.

“For all its faults, it is a service that is based on people not profits,” Mr Burnham will say. “That principle sets our health service apart and was famously celebrated two years ago at the Opening Ceremony of our Olympic Games.

“When his reorganisation hit trouble and was paused, David Cameron explicitly promised that it would not lead to more forced privatisation of services. But… on his watch, NHS privatisation is being forced through at pace and scale.

“Commissioners have been ordered to put all services out to the market.

“NHS spending on private and other providers has gone through the £10 billion barrier for the first time.

“When did the British public ever give their consent for this?

“It is indefensible for the character of the country’s most valued institution to be changed in this way without the public being given a say.”

Among the long-lasting agreements due to be signed by the Coalition in a bid to tie the next government into its privatisation of services are two contracts for cancer care in Staffordshire lasting no less than 10 years and worth a massive £1.2 billion; a five-year contract worth £800 million for the care of older people in Cambridge; and a contract in Oxford and Milton Keynes set to begin a month before the General Election for medical staffing.

The last of these is using a ‘reverse auction’ process where the lowest bidder wins, confirming fears of a ‘race to the bottom’ culture and contradicting claims from the Government of no competition on price in the NHS.

Once again Labour shows us that there is no depth to which the Cameron administration will not stoop. This time they are using the summer Parliamentary recess to sign contracts intended to prevent any future government from restoring our health service and reversing the appalling damage they have done so that they and their friends can profit from the suffering and sickness of the poor.

They could not do more damage if they were a filthy, sickening, scheming plague of lice-ridden vermin; in fact, that is exactly what they resemble.